A lot of things in dance are difficult, and a lot of things in ballet are hard to teach. But of all of them, turns are the hardest to do well, and the hardest to teach, in my opinion. I am not a super turner myself. I have a slipped disk in my neck which limits my range of motion to the right, and because of my hip issues, getting up over my right leg is challenging.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, stimulated by two factors. The first is internal to my own practice (as the yogis say), namely, I spent a lot of time working with my teen/adult beginner students last semester on setting up for the pirouette from fifth en dehors with the exercise I'm demonstrating in the video below. The thing I really focus on with the students is coordinating the arm movements to the legs, so that the whole thing is integrated. Anyway, after a semester of doing this twice a week every week, I found that I was turning better myself. Not radically better, but more consistently, and with greater ability to sustain through a double and occasionally a triple.
The other factor is a young dancer by the name of Melanie McIntire; she is approximately the same age as my younger child, and is currently a professional trainee at Ballet West, but basically, she's an internet phenomenon. This kid can turn. She trained at Master Ballet Academy in Arizona (which is a whole thing unto itself), and they seem to be okay there with their star students really leaning in on internet celebrity, so I know a weird amount about this person, such as that she uses very degraded toe pads, and that she once completed 20 rotations. Twenty. What the actual?
And the thing you can really see when you watch her videos is this: girl can spot. Her spotting is so good that you literally aren't seeing the back of her head at all -- you just see her face. Of course, she's right over her leg, her core is absolutely still and supported, her turnout is perfect, but ultimately, it's the spotting that seems like it's the key. And this is also what other multiple turners I've talked to emphasize. Kathryn Morgan, when I took class from her, made us practice spots again and again without even attempting the full pirouette. Finis Jung, from whom I took a whole class on turns, made us shout out "spot! spot! spot!" in order to put spotting front and center in our brains. He also doesn't believe in just doing "preps" -- I can understand his point that a prep just teaches you NOT to turn, but I still feel like for my adult beginners it helps them find the body position they need in order to successfully turn. IDK.
Spotting is for some reason the most difficult skill for some of us to master. For me, I put a lot of my tension into my neck at the best of times, and the stress of turning en pointe (or even en demi pointe) definitely drives me to tuck my chin and stiffen up my neck even more. So I have to consciously relax it, while also consciously not relaxing my core. Phew.
But just as a technical skill, spotting is, I think, under taught, especially in a lot of adult classes. I mean, you might get a quick explanation once or twice, but it's actually something that takes a lot of practice before it's ingrained in the brain and body. I feel like this was a problem with my early training -- they just said, "and spot and spot and spot!" but we never stopped to talk about it. And I've heard a ton of conflicting advice... leave your gaze on your spot as long as you can before you go, or get your head around as fast as you can? Physiologically, what makes sense is that you would keep your spot for the first quarter turn, then use your head to bring you around to the opposite quarter (where you find the spot again. The reason you don't really register the back of McIntire's head is that she times it just so that as she turns her head, her rotation already brings her face back around to the front.
This video by Runquiao Du gives a good spotting exercise that I think really gets down to the crux of the issue: what is the timing of the spot? When in the turn, otherwise, is the moment to whip the head from one side to the other? He makes it look super easy, but in fact, having practiced this, I find that it is not all that straightforward.
I like another KM trick, which is that you count your spots (in your head or aloud) down. That is, if you're going for a triple, you count 3,2,1. It's aspirational, to be sure, but there's something in it.
One more spotting trick that I learned from Catherine Batcheller of Ballet West Academy is to say your full name out loud while you turn, which basically has the effect of relaxing your mouth and therefore jaw, I think. Anyhow, it feels stupid, but it kinda works.
Okay, so here I am in my Saturday morning sweats demonstrating the thing. Usually I also have them do quarter and half turns, but in my dining room there really isn’t room to execute those safely!
